WAI-ER Telecon 2000-04-24 1000 to 1130 EST +0500
Participants:
LK: Leonard R. Kasday (chair)
HB: Harvey Bingham (scribe) [plus edits from LK]
DB: Dick Brown
MC: Michael Cooper
CR: Chris Ridpath
GR: Gregory J. Rosmaita
Regrets:
WC: Wendy Chisholm
Resolved:
Title: "Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Evaluation and Repair
Tools" (AERT).
Face to Face Meeting: change agenda to include planning and strategy in the
10:45-12 slot, add 15 min debriefing time after lunch
1. NAME OF DOCUMENT
LK: Wendy Chisholm proposed: "Techniques for Evaluation and Repair Tools"
with subtitle: "for conformance with the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines."
GR: UA group does not have responsibility for repair. Mostly onus on
authoring to make sure the content and markup is OK. Jon Gunderson does not
want source change as a user agent responsibility.
For example, without Noframes, use title of referred URL as header. This is an
exposition strategy, not repair strategy. UAGL does not include [HB: but
references] ERT document.
LK: OK to keep "repair" in our title.
HB: Want to include "Accessibility" in the title.
GR: Agree we need accessibility: "Techniques for Accessibility Evaluation and
Repair Tools"
GR: Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)
GR:Page Authoring group PA went to WCAG.
GR: Our document deals with content.
LK: RESOLVED: name and acronym "Techniques for Web Content
Accessibility Evaluation and Repair Tools" (AERT).
Do not need subtitle.
2. AGENDA FOR FACE TO FACE
2.1 Day 1, Thursday 2000-05-11
LK: Hope to do brain-storming, with new faces.
MB: Too much time talking about techniques. Need more about goal-setting.
Good opportunity to tune the charter.
GR: Does our charter need to be developed in cooperation with the ATAG
group.
MB: That is first this group's responsibility. Then in a follow-up consider
the
dependencies.
GR: Also in AU.
LK: What is their perception of dependencies with ERT.
GR: AU at CSUN agreed that draft of new charter: 6-months to 1-year will do
conformance reviews, use work of ERT to provide techniques for AT tool
developers to identify and repair author's work. Want checkpoint to checkpoint
review with relative priorities depending on priority with WCAG.
GR: Consider the Thursday after lunch session for more planning and goal
setting.
LK: Start with checkpoints where we are "clueless". Then start on
goal-setting.
GR: Reports on "informal" discussions made over lunch.
HB: Lunch discussions, possibly by informal sub-groups.
CR: If we had a tool that implemented all of ERT and checked document,
What can we assert regarding compliance? ERT says that some we can check
automatically, which are manual. We can assert that passing automatically
reduces the judgment on manual checks.
LK: Not adequate. Frame with 2 check-boxes "yes" and "no".
CR: Can we make a claim based on the automatic piece?
GR: Want to get the authors to be able to focus on manual checks, after
passing
the machine checks.
LK: This issue is a good topic for F2F.
GR: Others want to know about tools, and repair strategies.
LK: On Friday joint meeting with AU. A-prompt, Marjolein Katmsa of Allaire,
Bobby, and WAVE will be there (none from Amaya), ?Mozilla?.
LK: What does it mean if we said we as group are developing code?
GR: Amaya has been test bed for developing topics of personal interest. The
effect is many disjoint styles of coding.
KJ: Would like to have some guidelines to Amaya.
GR: CMN is working with Amaya. Lack of staff limits activity. Three are
programming, remotely located, but technically coordinated. Open source with
implementor giving back to Amaya. There is a problem with it getting more
widely used is that it is UNIX-based: support for Windows interfaces is
minimal [screen-reading access programs don't work well with it.]
GR: IBM is investing time and money to support Mozilla.
DB: (leaving call)
GR: F2F purpose: strategise, put out on list for follow-up so others can
participate. We have many issues to cover on checkpoints.
HB: [ F2F morning sessions are conditioned by 5- to 8-hour time-zone shift the
first day. People in the afternoon session will be in prior-day's evening
hours.]
GR: Problematic checkpoints on cognitive issues are hard. Joint UA/WC on
navigation issues telecon April 27 2:00 p.m. email Jon Gunderson if interested.
[note added by LRK: we also decided to
change agenda to include planning and strategy in the 10:45-12 slot, add 15
min debriefing time after lunch.]
2.2. Day 2 (Friday 2000-05-12) Joint AU and ERT
3. Checklist
LK: The current checklist doesn't seem to distinguish between tools that assist
manual checking and those that don't, for example, checking that reading
order is proper when laid
out in a table, that it can be linearized. We have no automatic way to check
this.
HB: Font size can perturb old-style line-by-line reading.
LK: Cell-by-cell reading following ERT. How call the kind of tool support:
prompt, automatic, or no-support.
MC: Some tools may do things not within ERT, or directly align with it. A tool
should be identified with the guideline, independent of ERT.
LK: Can anything be fully automatic?
MC: Blink or Marquis flag as bad. Language of document--tool could by
default set to English.
CR: Anything can be abused.
MC: Can we capture with heuristics many of the patterned ALT texts?
MC: A-prompt as part of an authoring tool, will allow its heuristic to become
part of the authoring tool.
GR: Authoring tools recommend that ALT text go with graphic. Include alt
descriptions with clip-art.
--
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
Department of Electrical Engineering
Temple University
423 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA 19122
kasday@acm.orghttp://astro.temple.edu/~kasday
(215) 204-2247 (voice)
(800) 750-7428 (TTY)